Name That Text Style

Design System Tactics.

Whether you're starting fresh or maintaining a mature system, this growing collection of tactics is designed to help you make progress at every stage.

Name That Text Style

Validate your text style or typography token names by asking teams to map them onto real product type examples.

When to use it

When updating or validating your type token naming model.

Steps

Collect 3-5 screens with examples of different text styles in your product (headlines, captions, etc).
Detach text styles (if relevant), and create an open space next to it with an arrow indicating which style is being reviewed.
Create drag and drop labels with your proposed token names heading-xl, body-sm.
Ask participants to drag each label next to the highlighted text style on your screens, allowing for duplication.
Keep a space for naming suggestions or confusion notes.
Refine naming structure based on patterns.

Outcome

Naming that reflects mental models
Improved usability of typography tokens
Shared understanding across teams

Related tactics

When to Split Your System

Determine when to split or unify your design system based on platform and brand needs.

Custom System or UI Kit?

Decide whether to build a custom system or use a UI kit.

Choosing a Governance Model

Decide how to manage contributions and decisions for your design system.

Crafting System Principles

Define core principles to guide design and development decisions for consistency and alignment.

Component Discovery & Review

Collaborate with teams to shape and review components before finalising designs.

Cross-functional Show & Tell

Share work across teams to gather feedback and build alignment.

Design-Developer Collaboration

Foster collaboration and communication between design and development teams.

Cross-Brand Consolidation

Unify multi-brand systems to streamline updates and ensure consistency.

Component Exploration

Explore multiple design directions for a component before settling on the final version.

Design Crit

Get structured feedback from your team to ensure designs meet goals and quality standards.

QA Process

Establish a consistent quality assurance process to catch bugs and misalignments early.

Design System Office Hours

A recurring space for support, feedback, and system insights.

Design-Developer Pairing Practices

Create paired design and development workflows to improve collaboration and reduce friction.

Spec Walkthrough

Review and clarify design specifications with your dev team before implementation.

Crazy 8s Sketching

Rapidly sketch 8 design variations in 8 minutes to explore diverse solutions.

Platform-Specific Overrides

Define when and how to override design system components for specific platforms.

Global Component Audit

Review and improve the quality, consistency, and accessibility of your system’s components.

How to Split a Design System

Split your system for scale, while keeping shared foundations in place.

Contribution & Review Model

Set up a structured, collaborative way for teams to propose and shape contributions to the system.

Content Strategy Integration

Integrate content guidelines into your design system for a cohesive experience.

Design to Code at Scale

Align design and engineering for consistent implementation.

Creating Guidance Pages

Build clear, accessible documentation for system components and guidelines.

Documentation Writing Workshop

Improve documentation through collaborative writing and peer feedback.

Creating Guideline Standards

Create consistent documentation to keep guidelines clear and scalable.

Design System Onboarding

Provide documentation to help new users quickly get up to speed with the system.

Measuring Component Usage

Track how often and where system components are being used across projects.

Improvements & Usage Audit

Map real journeys to uncover and prioritise system pain points.

Tooling Integration Audit

Assess how well your design system integrates with the tools teams are using.

Name That Icon

Test the usability and discoverability of your icons with users.

Name That Text Style

Validate typography style names and usage across teams.

Name That Space

Align your team on consistent spacing standards across products.

Component Retire & Replace

Identify outdated or redundant components and replace or retire them.

Cross-Platform Consistency Check

Check your components for consistency across web and native platforms to ensure a cohesive experience.

Design System Tactics.